T500 2TB SSD: The Ultimate Gen 4 Choice

Crucial T500 2TB SSD The Gen 4 All-Around SSD

A Robust Replacement for the P5 Plus

A “do-it-all” Gen 4 SSD that could function just as well in PCs, laptops, or PS5 systems without compromising TLC flash or a DRAM cache has long been desired. With its single-sided, economical design and enough performance, the T500 2TB SSD appears to be that drive on paper. Despite the impressive figures that Gen 5 SSDs have achieved, a useful drive is ultimately far more sensible.

With the P5 Plus, Crucial tried, but failed in many aspects, not the least of which was the lack of a heatsink option or the potential for a 4TB SKU at launch. With the hardware prowess of the formidable T700 combined with the knowledge gained from that experience, the T500 2TB SSD creates an intriguing device that must be carefully navigated amidst formidable rivals.

On the one hand, premium performance at an affordable price has been made possible by the launch of the DRAM-less Maxio MAP1602 controller with 232-Layer YMTC TLC flash. With the Lexar NM790 and Addlink A93, single-sided, efficient drives with cooling choices compatible with PS5, this combo is especially delicious at 4TB.

Although the slower, QLC-based Crucial P3 Plus or Corsair MP600 Core XT may be purchased for a little less money, the recent price reductions make it difficult to resist the tempting 7 GB/s with TLC deliciousness.

The absence of DRAM on these new SSDs is where they falter. The truth is that more recent DRAM-less controller architectures have done a fantastic job providing users with an excellent experience. However, certain applications simply perform faster on more robust SSDs with a local DRAM cache because old habits die hard.

In this aspect, the original eight-channel Gen 4 controllers have long been the best option; they are available at a reduced cost; the Silicon Power XS70 or something similar comes to mind. However, these drives are not without limitations; their application in laptops and other mobile devices is limited by the controllers’ higher power consumption, higher operating temperatures, and non-uniform component layouts.

The best design for laptops and tiny form factor devices is a single-sided, cooler design. This also applies to several portable gaming consoles including the PS5. New releases like as the WD Blue SN580 are well-liked models, but you have been left out in the cold if you want full Gen 4 performance and DRAM.

The trusted option for Gen 3 is the SK Hynix Gold P31, however it’s getting on in age and sometimes be hard to find. Here’s where the T500 2TB SSD is useful. Because it seemed to accomplish everything so well, the Gold P31 felt like an outdated product that was meant for something greater. Similar in feel to the T500 2TB SSD, this device has the potential to be a successful surprise with some fine-tuning.

Specifications:

There are three capacities available for the Crucial T500: 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The latter two have a variant with a heatsink. By the end of the year, the 4TB is anticipated. These have corresponding MSRPs of $89.99, $119.99, and $169.99; the final two costs are increased by $10 due to the heatsink. Though it might not be essential, the heatsink is compatible with the PS5 and is worth the minor cost. Regretfully, these prices are just too exorbitant for the state of the market. We anticipate much reduced street costs, particularly in light of the approaching holidays.

It’s possible to think of the T500 2TB SSD as the more attractive brother of the P5 Plus or as the smaller sister of the T700. In many aspects, the P5 Plus is superseded by the T500 2TB SSD, however Crucial has lately released a heatsink version of the latter to offer it some competition. In any case, the T500 exceeds the capabilities of PCIe 4.0, with sequential read and write speeds of 7,400 / 7,000 MB/s and random read and write IOPS of 1,180K / 1,440K. Although it isn’t quite as good as the Samsung 990 Pro, the T500 could be hiding some secrets.

It’s good that the drive has encryption capabilities as well. Crucial offers a standard 5-year guarantee and a 600TB write capacity per TB capacity. Although this level of endurance is more than sufficient for the majority of users, a greater TBW would have been excellent to help set the drive apart.

Programs and Add-ons

Crucial offers a download for both Acronis True Image and its own SSD toolkit, known as the Crucial Storage Executive. With Storage Executive, you may view system and drive information, including SMART data for drive health monitoring. You may also use the program to switch between features and, if necessary, update the firmware. Momentum Cache, disk sanitization, and encryption are among the features. This last function, which is often better kept disabled, uses a small amount of system RAM to cache data and speed up input/output for a drive.

An effective piece of software for data imaging, cloning, and backup is Acronis . These procedures are typical when working with a new drive, and it’s handy to have the download available. A Micron NVMe driver for Windows is also available from Crucial, but it’s not needed. Until Crucial/Micron upgrades the driver in the future with explicit DirectStorage support, we advise sticking with the default Windows NVMe driver.

I/O+ firmware from Phison with DirectStorage optimization is present in the T500; this firmware is not present in Gen 5 SSDs, Gen 4 Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G, or Gen Seagate FireCuda 530 SSDs. It has this feature in common with the T700, however the P5 Plus does not have it. This function does not require a firmware upgrade.

The T500 is a single-sided device that is available unadorned or with a stylish, useful heatsink. It is not necessary to operate this drive, but if you have your own solution in mind, we may suggest the heatsink.

This is the first time we’ve seen the Phison E25 SSD controller, which is used by the T500. When it was first revealed this year, not much was known about it especially in comparison to the E27T and E31T. Ample and effective 1GB LPDDR4 per TB capacity is linked with the controller. This controller has the potential to be disruptive due to its position in the product stack, thus it’s worth investigating more.

One option is the DRAM-less Maxio MAP1602 SSD controller, which has worked wonders with YMTC’s 232-Layer TLC in products like the Addlink A93, Teamgroup MP44, and Lexar NM790. Conversely, there are earlier controllers with DRAM, such as the SMI SM2264, Innogrit IG5236, and Phison E18.

These are present on a few well-known drives, such as the Adata Legend 960 Max, the HP FX900 Pro, and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. Since drives such as the Silicon Power XS70 frequently switch out the E18 and IG5236, it makes sense to place them on the same level. Compared to the four-channel MAP1602, these eight-channel controllers use significantly more power, but they are excellent for larger workloads.

It’s reasonable to argue that the MAP1602, particularly with its 232-Layer flash, has caused a stir. Therefore, it’s not shocking that Phison and SMI are entering the market with the SM2268XT and E27T. These are all 12nm components, however for less ridiculous Gen 5 power usage, we’ll need 7nm components, the E31T and SM2504XT.

However, where are the incredibly power-efficient DRAM drives? While the Solidigm P44 Pro is undoubtedly pretty efficient, this space would be better served by a quick four-channel design. Even while we believe DRAM-less systems have shown their worth, having an additional choice would be excellent.

This is where the T500 2TB SSD and E25 come into play. This controller has two-thirds of the main Cortex-R5 cores, yet it is structurally comparable to the E18. Despite appearing to be a simplified version of the E26 on paper, it appears to utilize the standard CoXProcessor configuration instead of the one seen on the E20 and E26.

Rather of using the standard ARM Cortex-R5 CoXProcessor for client SSD controllers, the E26 uses the AndesCore RISC-V IP from the E20 for its N25 CoProcessor. Considering how power-hungry the E26 is known to be, this is definitely a good thing.

The drawback of reducing from eight channels is that, similar to Phison’s DRAM-less controllers, it limits the controller to sixteen CE in total, four per channel. This appears to be a 4TB limit, which somewhat restricts the storage possibilities. Even though the SM2268XT’s 3200 MT/s bus is more spectacular, the fully functional 2400 MT/s bus allows you to test PCIe 4.0 performance limits with just four channels and still get respectable performance even at 500GB. Since the IG5220 hasn’t been clocked this high and the IG5221 is missing, we’ll exclude InnoGrit from the discussion for the time being.

Now connect this controller to the 232-Layer flash from Micron. We were able to examine this NAND flash using the Crucial T700 and discovered that, for instance, its hexa-plane architecture was comparable to that of YMTC’s 232-Layer TLC.

Higher capacities may be more appealing since these dies are denser than the 176-Layer generation, which also helps the flash pump out more bandwidth per die. Since fewer dies are required for channel saturation with the four-channel E25 than with the four-channel MAP1602, this shouldn’t be an issue either. We also anticipate seeing 4TB on this disk, although Crucial has said it won’t be available until 2024.

With mitigations in place for the difficulties that come with greater layer counts, higher density and hence bigger capacity SSDs are becoming more common, making this not the fastest flash in terms of latency. Advanced approaches can still increase performance, but reducing power consumption is frequently more important.

Trade-offs must be made, and a careful balance must constantly be kept. An excellent illustration of this evolution is Samsung’s 232-Layer flash, which was tested on the 4TB 990 Pro and uses a more flexible four-plane arrangement as opposed to a larger six-plane design.

Although Kioxia’s/WD’s BiCS has been more effective in offering high-density flash at a lower layer count, which helps reduce costs, the performance and power efficiency of the flash might seem outdated.

Though we believe firmware improvement for Micron’s 232-Layer flash, which contains the T500 2TB SSD’s E25 controller, may also yield better results than with the initial wave of Gen 5/E26 drives, careful firmware optimization helps this flash operate better than predicted. For complete maturity, we’ll need further generations of this flash, or larger layer counts with this fundamental design.

It is more challenging to directly compare to YMTC’s 232-Layer flash. When used in conjunction with the InnoGrit IG5236 controller, previous iterations of YMTC’s TLC had production problems and documented failures. Apart from politics and embargoes, YMTC’s more recent flash has done rather well in the drives we tested, several of which are mentioned above.

We’ll see where this goes, but wafer-on-wafer bonding is starting to show up on the roadmaps of several flash manufacturers. With relatively cheap NAND flash memory, pricing and scalability are the main concerns. However, there are still unanswered concerns over how these roadmaps will really play out given the state of the NAND and SSD markets.